If you've been in a symbolic struggle long enough, even when the struggle is over, you don't know it's over.

Writing a poem is unwriting a knot, like untying a shoelace that is clubbing your foot.

New formalism is writing with language as flow, like the flow from a dam, running through a desert that has had no rain for decades.

Poetry must speak of others, in order to speak for the poet's imagination, in order to speak of itself; it is slowed down by poetics after its flight is over.

As I grew older - and even when I was younger - it had puzzled me why I continued and continue to be heterosexual.

Poetry has roots, but they are sometimes cut off and still poetry is written.

At a certain point, the struggles with teaching and mothering and so on and so forth, those decline, those lessen.

I'm in my 60s, and a cancer scare just makes you more aware of mortality.

Working women went through a time when they believed that.

[My muse] she's impatient with me, because I don't do what I should do: sit down and write.

Agency over one's sexual self - and the articulation of that kind of agency - might seem transgressive to readers who don't expect it in a woman's text.

Of all the unexpected things in contemporary literature, this is among the oddest: that kids have an inordinate appetite for very long, very tricky, very strange books about places that don’t exist.

In the end, we only regret the chances we didn't take.

I had to decide what I was going to do, and what I was going to be.I was standing there, waiting for someone to do something, till I realised the person I was waiting for was myself.

Poverty treads close upon the heels of great and unexpected wealth.

For now I'm building up stories for the retirement home!

Patience is not passive; on the contrary, it is active; it is concentrated strength.

The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention.

Its amazing that so many kids turn out to be fairly normal, considering the weird socialization they get in public schools.

When I am grown to man's estate I shall be very proud and great. And tell the other girls and boys Not to meddle with my toys.

Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of mental laziness-lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.